Kyriakos Pierrakakis accused PASOK and Nikos Androulakis of slipping into toxicity due to internal competition with Alexis Tsipras.

The Minister of National Economy and Finance accused Androulakis of competition with Alexis Tsipras over “who will become more toxic for the second place“.

“I see competition with Mr Tsipras on who will be more toxic for second place. I have never seen so much political competition for such a small prize,” the finance minister said.

The controversy started with Public Power Corporation and the Finance Ministry’s amendment allowing the Public Sector to participate in a share capital increase in listed companies in which it has a direct or indirect stake.

“For the first time, a legislative framework is established that allows the Greek State to participate in share capital increases of listed companies in which it holds a stake,” Finance Minister Kyriakos Pierrakakis announced while presenting an amendment to the Parliament. As he explained, the aim of the regulation is to prevent the weakening of the state’s stake in strategically important companies, such as PPC.

“The PPC of today has nothing to do with the PPC of the past,” the minister said, stressing that in 2019 the state’s stake in PPC was worth 150 million, while today it is worth 2.4 billion. As he stressed, the PPC as a modern, vertically integrated, energy group “plays a key role in the energy security of the region“.

“In an environment of increased geopolitical uncertainty, energy is a matter of security and strategic autonomy“, Pierrakakis stressed, calling on the Parliament to vote in favour of the bill.

Referring to the successes of the New Democracy government with unemployment about to fall to an all-time low, the increase in the minimum wage, debt reduction, increased wages, exports and investment, the Finance Minister retorted, “Whatever is needed, we do it with credibility, without targeting. You solve problems with “to” and not “will”.

About the invocation of Cypriot President Christodoulides by Androulakis, the minister commented: “I was surprised that you invoked Mr Christodoulides. You take one here, one there,” he said, stressing that the government’s policy on dividends is exactly the same as that applied in Cyprus.

Still, on banks, he rejected the call for extraordinary taxation, explaining that the increase in their profits was not due to speculation but to the reduction of provisions for credit risk, an indication, according to him, that the Greek economy is on a better path.